This is the occasional dumping space for a guy who has a family, runs a bike shop and rides bikes all over the US.

Friday, May 19, 2006

Bike to Work Day and Patapsco

Today was/is Bike to Work Day. The culmination of Bike Month and Bike to Work Week. Check with the League for more details. Check with WABA and Gwadz for pics from DC's event. City Bikes has always gone WAY overboard to support this event. It's our bread and butter. We always get a bunch of staff downtown and give away some bikes. It goes well. It's fun. It didn't rain this year. Last year I got wet and this year I had too much work to do (for City Bikes) to go all the way downtown. Also, I had a meeting at Patapsco. This is a pic of MY bike to work day with Emma and Jeremy. It's the same every day...

As some of you know, there has been some pirate trail activity out in Patapsco on the Landing Rd side of the park. A bunch of half-assed jumps, log rides and small doubles popped up around 7-8 months ago. I'm not dissing the construction... half-assed is still half an ass. I ride it all the time and enjoy it, it's just built pretty square with most drops to flat. Here's a bunch of pics... #1 is berm 1 to drop 3 and 4 from Norris Ln. #2 is Dan giving some perspective to the 3.5 footer right before the gap over the small stream. The last pic is Dan standing in the 7' log to log gap at the top of the opposite side of the trail.

We had a meeting with park staff today regarding the 'future' of that section of trail. It was built 100% illegally and basically, we (me, Eric, Jeff and Dan) all support the park doing what they have to do. I won't speak for MORE, but that's what us smart dudes believe... Anyway, we walked through the trails with the head honcho at the park and the friendly neighborhood trail crew today. We (MORE, I guess) suggested that we leave the stuff up and start planning for a new section of the park that would be specific for dirt jumping, drops, skinnies, etc. Basically, it would be a skill area for fun stuff. It's hard to know what to expect from the park, but, luckily Mr Honcho was on board!

We stressed that we DO NOT condone this type of rouge trail building and would be happy to help tear it down once the new stuff was close to or under construction.

So, ride Lewis and Clarke and thank me, Dan, Eric, Jeff and MORE for keeping it open for the near future AND for the start of the planning process for a rad section of super-fun skills stuff.

So, this is an un-official announcement that we will start building a jump park-style place at Patapsco. No idea exactly when (within a year and a half?) or where (in the park somewhere) but we have the beginnings of a project here.

After the meeting, I talked Eric into coming back to my place (hubba hubba) and helping me out with Bill Murray. I pulled him into the opening of the trail at full-tilt and he almost ate it. Briefly, you are hauling along a paved sidewalk and you make a left down a 6' embankment at 20mph into a tunnel in the trees and make a soft left up onto a 10' high embankment (soon to be step up). He was laughing his arse off. That got him to stick around and help me dig the bench cut into the slope for a solid hour. We walked the trail and looked at a few line options through the beech trees. There's more work to do on the first section of trail, but it's pretty rad and fun right now. It's worth the 1 mile pedal over there just for the drop in. I really appreciate the sweat. I paid him back by taking him on a quick urban singletrack session (read: golf course riding) with lots of high-speed turns and a few jumps. Oh, and I let him ride the carbon fsr bike. I guess that's OK, eh?

So, to sum up: everyday is bike to work day for me and the kids, Lewis and Clarke at Patapsco is open for now, we have support from Mr Honcho at the park for a superfun skills area with dirt jumps and drops and Eric is a good guy.

6 Comments:

Mike, I have to say that you utterly amaze me. I do have a question though: When you shake hands with the head honcho's at Patapsco, are you palming them $20 bills or something? And you say not only did they agree to keep the outlaw trails but even to let MORE build some more bone-braking trails...simply amazing. Personally, I would of had no qualms about tearing the stuff down. Not that I don't like jumps and new trails and such. It was the whole principle of the illegalness of it all and the audacity of doing all the constuction. Jeepers, I can remember not more than 8 yrs ago if you even layed some sticks down over the bad mud holes the park management put up signs forbidding the practice. Kudo's to you and the others who represent MORE for being able to sweet talk the park management into an unpresidented state of compliancy..:-)signed...BikerRob

Mike, as usual, thanks for going above and beyond for the good of trails in the area, and giving everyone a chance to ride the type of trails they want. (Not me, I'll stick to Rosaryville. I think I broke my neck just LOOKING at those jumps...)